BA non ha ancora ricevuto gli aiuti di stato...
Austria seeks right to Bank Austria stake -sources
Fri Sep 11, 2009 10:30am EDT
By Boris Groendahl
VIENNA, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Austria is demanding the right to take a stake in UniCredit's (
CRDI.MI) Bank Austria if it injects state capital into the Italian bank's Austrian arm, three sources close to the talks said.
The government has put a proposal to Bank Austria, the country's biggest bank and which also manages most UniCredit assets in emerging Europe, under which it would be able to swap the non-voting capital it would inject into common stock.
This swap, which would give the government only a minority stake, would be triggered in case the bank does not stick to commitments made in return for the state aid, the sources said.
"The right to swap (into voting stock) is an option that was put on the table by the government and that will be discussed next week," said one of the sources who, like the others, declined to be identified because the talks are confidential.
This source said the option was only meant to be an "emergency brake" and while the government did not want to become a Bank Austria shareholder it wanted to have a means to enforce the rules for the capital.
But as markets have warmed to bank capital raisings and the urgency to get state-backed cash is gradually disappearing, it could mean UniCredit, like Italian peer Intesa Sanpaolo (
ISP.MI), could shun aid and seek other sources of capital.
Two other sources said the proposal had been made to Bank Austria and UniCredit in talks that have been going on informally for months but are now in a more concrete phase.
Bank Austria and UniCredit said talks with Austria were ongoing but declined to comment on detail. A finance ministry spokesman also declined to comment.
4 BLN EUROS FROM ITALY, AUSTRIA
UniCredit said in May it wanted to raise 4 billion euros
($5.8 billion) in state capital from Italy and Austria to bolster its capital as bad debt rose, particularly in emerging Europe where it is the biggest lender.
The Austrian share of the money -- expected to be half of the total -- would come as participation capital, a non-voting form of equity similar to preference shares and counting as core Tier 1 capital, equal to common stock. [nLR890108]
The Austrian finance ministry has said it would only inject the capital if UniCredit struck a similar deal in Italy and if it injected its own money into Bank Austria. [nWEA3094]
Bank Austria's peers Raiffeisen Zentralbank [RZB.UL] and Erste Group Bank (
ERST.VI), also its closest rivals in emerging Europe, both got capital without a government option to swap it into voting stock.
For both of them, conditions included annual interest payments of 8 percent and commitments to boost lending to Austrian retail and corporate customers.
In Bank Austria's case, sources have previously said the government was also asking for assurances that Bank Austria does not cut jobs and it keeps management of eastern European assets in Vienna.
"The concern is that this is a foreign-owned bank which could pursue strategies that mean uncertainty for its Austrian business," the first source said.
But a second source said Bank Austria would insist on getting the same treatment as Raiffeisen and Erste.
Intesa Sanpaolo is seeking 4 billion euros in Italian state aid but its chief executive has said it could look for alternatives. The bank has earmarked about 10 billion euros in non-core assets for sale to boost capital. [nLA645963]
UniCredit's core Tier 1 capital level stood at 6.9 percent at the end of June, which some analysts said was a very thin cushion against the expected surge in bad debt in central and eastern Europe it and other banks face.
If it shunned the Austrian proposal, UniCredit would have to tap markets in some form to bolster this ratio.
"The alternative to receiving government capital would be to access the markets directly," Goldman Sachs said in a recent note. "To raise 4 billion euros ... UniCredit would need to issue 1,681 million new shares (10 percent of outstanding shares) at current prices."
